This invention relates to broad ion beam deposition (BIBD) apparatus and uses thereof. It is known to provide BIBD apparatus having an ion source, which feeds an ion beam through parallel grids to form a collimated beam that projects on a target to sputter material onto a substrate. Typically the target is deposed at about 45° to the main axis of the beam and the resultant sputtering occurs in a fairly wide arc with the relatively high degree of non uniformity. The ion beams so produced are generally circular in cross section and so either quite a lot of the target is not utilised or some of the beam will tend to pass by the edges of the target with the result that stray materials may be sputtered. Either way the efficiency is poor and so for the most part ion beam deposition has been a research tool or used in the manufacture of component parts where very specific film properties are essential and can only be achieved by this technique. This is because to date throughput has been very low and so only high value goods can bear the cost of such an operation.
It is known to have more than one target of different materials, mounted on a carousel in the form, for example, of a hexagon, to enable successive depositions but this tends to mean that the beam area at the target has to be further reduced to avoid stray impacts on the preceding and succeeding targets.